Welcome to Modern Art & Ideas! This course is designed for anyone interested in learning more about modern and contemporary art. Over the next five weeks, you will look at art through a variety of themes: Places & Spaces, Art & Identity, Transforming Everyday Objects, and Art & Society. Each week kicks off with a video that connects works of art from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection to the theme. You will hear audio interviews with artists, designers, and curators and learn more about selected works in the additional readings and resources.
Throughout this course you will discover how artists:
-- represent place and take inspiration from their environment,
-- create works of art to express, explore, and question identity,
-- use everyday objects to challenge assumptions about what constitutes a work of art and how it should be made,
-- and respond to the social, cultural, and political issues of their time through works of art.
Through the discussion forum prompts and peer review assignment, you will also have the opportunity to connect with other learners and explore how these themes resonate with your own life and experience.

DP

What a genuinely refreshing course that really caught me attention. Well done to the team behind this course as I am more interested in modern art after completing this course than ever before.

PY

Nov 01, 2018

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The whole program was very well organized, and I liked how the themes were not in chronological order. All the narration and artists’ talk were interesting and highly informative. Thanks!

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Module 5: Art & Society

Explore works of art created in response to the social, cultural, and political issues of their time. Gain a deeper understanding of history and contemporary society. Be encouraged to think critically about world events and how they are depicted.

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Lisa Mazzola

Assistant Director, School and Teacher Programs

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Sarah Meister, curator in the Department of Photography. >> This is a photograph of a young migrant mother in Nipomo, California. She's seated with her youngest child held closely to her, and two of her other seven children have their heads resting on her shoulder, but turned away from the camera. She holds her hand to her chin in a gesture of concern about the family's future, and she looks out onto the horizon with lines of worry on her forehead. She is identified as destitute in some early captions for the image, and it was only later in the life of the image that Florence Thompson became known as the migrant mother. >> Dorothea Lange took the photograph in 1936, at the height of The Great Depression. >> Lange was being paid by the government to photograph the effects of The Depression on the population of the United States. There was no part of the country that was untouched by The Depression, and it meant that people from all kinds of backgrounds were simply trying to make ends meet. There were loads of migrant workers traveling through California to try to find work. Dorothea Lange made at least six exposures of this migrant mother and various combinations of her children in February or early March, 1936. The reason that this has become such a symbol of the Depression is that it's really in this composition, where she's moved in closer and closer to the migrant mother's face, bringing the children around her. And it's this one image that has become synonymous with this moment in our country's history.